


Victims of Circumstance - 18/20 – Plans and Promises, Monsters and Allies

by motsureru



Series: Victims of Circumstance [18]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-29
Updated: 2008-02-29
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsureru/pseuds/motsureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for Season 1 and Season 2. This is a <b><span>sequel</span> </b>to <i>Any Other Night</i>, which is a <b><span>sequel</span></b> to <i>Broken Glass. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Victims of Circumstance - 18/20 – Plans and Promises, Monsters and Allies

**Author's Note:**

> An enormous amount of thanks to [](http://etoile-dunord.livejournal.com/profile)[**etoile_dunord**](http://etoile-dunord.livejournal.com/), who edits my commas and makes me happy doing it.

**Teaser _:_**   _“Am I gonna die…?”  
_  


 

.18Plans and Promises, Monsters and Allies

 

Mohinder scooted back his chair with a heavy, distracted sigh. His head was aching horribly, and he scratched unconsciously at the bandages wrapped around it. Were it not for his pride and his fear, he might have asked for pain killers of some kind. But every time Mohinder thought of the pain he felt pounding at the back of his skull, he glanced back towards Elle, the weak and tremulous girl in the hospital bed some feet behind him, and reminded himself of why he would accept nothing, even the smallest of favors, from the Company.

He had been working back and forth between Elle’s room and the small lab attached to it for the better part of four hours now, going through her specific files, going through other Company files on viral tests and mutated strains, trying to get the background necessary to know how to properly deal with her rapidly degenerating case. The destruction of life had been going on at this Company for a sickening number of years. The more Mohinder read, the more he came to hate these people with a scalding, venomous revulsion.

“How is it going, Doctor Suresh?” Bob’s voice interrupted his thoughts, the door opening and closing with his arrival. “Any progress?”

“You must be joking,” Mohinder countered, rubbing his face, his every muscle feeling as tired as his brain. “The number of trials you’ve done, the number of strains you’ve created… the work you’ve done here is horrific. I hardly know where to begin, even after hours of going through this,” Mohinder admitted, shaking his head. “I can’t even… how could you have done human trials without having a cure?”

Bob seemed to turn his head a little, looking away in some dulled irritation. “Well, if you read carefully, Doctor Suresh, you’ll see that our recent experiments have _not_ been as dangerous as those attempted thirty years ago. We’ve learned our lesson thanks to the events of that time.”

Mohinder frowned over at Bob, giving him a critical glare. “Your daughter is dying. Obviously you haven’t.”

Shaking his head, Bob lifted both hands as if to dismiss himself from responsibility for that. “Now, Doctor Suresh, the virus strains we’ve been working with recently are not nearly as virulent as others out there. The one is slower-acting than the typical strain we work with here.”

The doctor stood up, staring at Bob in continued disbelief. “That doesn’t justify anything!” he insisted, waving a hand in Elle’s direction. “She’s still dying! What did she do to deserve this?”

Bob took in a slow breath then, eyeing Mohinder with a wary distaste for his words. “Elle volunteered to be injected, Doctor Suresh. She was being punished, and she chose to do this. But she expected she could be cured, too.” He seemed strangely uncomfortable saying that, but it was only betrayed in mild suggestions of his body language and the uneasiness in his eyes.

“Punished? You call the risk of dying from a deadly disease _punishment?_ ” Mohinder asked incredulously, almost wincing from the idiocy behind such words.

“Elle was responsible for the escape of two very dangerous men here at our facility,” Bob continued his explanation, adjusting the glasses on his face. “Shortly after, she lost her temper with a building member and her ability short-circuited our electronics system, nearly setting lose a wing of top-security prisoners. These are extremely deadly men and women who aim only to destroy others. She needed to accept responsibility for what happened. That is why Elle volunteered for our experiment, instead of lock-up.”

Mohinder gave a short, mocking, breathless laugh. “What you mean to say is that she had no other way to redeem herself in your eyes, so you all but forced her to raise her hand. I get it. I don’t need any further explanation of how you operate.”

Bob gave a weary sigh, his jaw a little tense. “You may not approve of the way we operate, Doctor Suresh, but we’ve done incredible things here and helped a lot of people.”

“I need to get back to work. You’re wasting your daughter’s time,” Mohinder said flatly, turning and opening up another folder to sort through.

Frowning, Bob glanced to Elle and then back at Mohinder. “You know, if you would work together with Sebastian this would be a lot easier and faster, Doctor Suresh. You might even be able t-”

“If you bring Sebastian within ten feet of me, you can forget about your daughter’s life,” Mohinder stated firmly, as seriously as he could manage. He may have been a captive, slave to his morality to help this girl, but he knew that he held certain cards too, in this game. If Sebastian were anywhere near him, Mohinder knew that his urge to strangle the man would win out over his ability to work competently. “I can do my work without him.”

“Well then,” Bob concluded, trying to keep his tone positive. “I’ll be back in a couple hours with something for you to eat. If you need anything, let Raymond know and he’ll call me.” Bob turned with that and exited the room, closing the door behind him.

Mohinder sighed and braced himself by his palms against the counter, hanging his head a little. He hesitated a moment, and then slid his hand into his pocket. From it, he pulled out the small, golden circular object that he had almost forgotten about. Sylar’s gift, the pocket watch, was still in his possession, ticking away the hours that they were apart.

Opening the cover, Mohinder stared at the inside, letting his eyes follow over the delicate curves of golden hands and imprinted numbers. He closed the watch in his palm and sighed again, bringing it to his chest. _Are you coming?_ The question lingered, unspoken, in Mohinder’s mind. 

 

 

“I have the power to save a man’s life, and I’m going to do it.” Mohinder’s words were tense and honest, pleading and forceful all at the same time, caught up the contradiction that the man would always be. He was giving Sylar those dark eyes, that look of reluctant obstinacy that begged to be understood, even as he stood up for himself. It was different, this time. “This could be the most important thing I do for any of us.” Mohinder was not saying the words in anger, he was not flat out refusing Sylar with caustic glares of misunderstanding.

He wanted for Sylar to understand. He wanted Sylar to say ‘Yes, go be who you are,’ and Sylar was tempted sorely to do it without any complaint at all. He heard himself add, “Come here,” and watched as his hands reached out, delving into Mohinder’s curls as they were apt to do.

Sylar drew Mohinder to him, their lips meeting powerfully in the crossfire. One hand was moving around the back of Mohinder’s head, the other slipping down the small of his back. They were kissing deeply, wantonly, tongues delving and lips pushing and pulling at the gravity between them. _I need this_ was the thought that crossed Sylar’s mind, but his mouth betrayed him, as it whispered, “ _I need you,_ ” into Mohinder’s ear. 

There was a sudden pressure on Sylar’s chest, and he gasped as Mohinder pressed his palms to Sylar’s chest, shoving him back. Sylar’s sight spun for an instant, and then he had fallen against the mattress of their bed, Mohinder hovering above with a rare, seductive look on his features.

“Mohinder…”

“Mohinder?” the darker man echoed. Mohinder tilted his head, and the expression on his face shifted slowly into something more like amusement than arousal. His skin began to pale, like a man terrified, but continued to do so, Mohinder’s lovely sienna color slipping away like sand from an hourglass. Then Mohinder’s face seemed to thin, his body become more slender. His hair slid back as though retracting into his very skull and the ebony hue fell away like a shadow from light, taking on a whitish blonde shade. The last to go were Mohinder’s beautiful eyes, so dark and mysterious, which glimmered once before sliding into a pale touch of green. In an instant Sebastian stood over Sylar instead, and Sebastian began was the one who began to laugh.

“Mohinder? _Mohinder?_ ” the man continued to say, repeating the name again and again.

Choking on a gasp, Sylar sat up, reaching out a hand as if to stop the man from existing in that very spot. Suddenly, Sebastian seized before an invisible grip, his eyes going wide, and a thin line began to appear across his forehead, revealed easily by his short hair. Crimson began to slide down his brow and into his eyes, but instead of screaming, instead of showing pain, this time Sebastian laughed harder. He nearly convulsed, holding his stomach as he cackled like a mad man, eyes wide and mouth outstretched in a mindless grin. 

“ _Mohinder?_ Doctor Suresh! _Doctor Suresh!_ ” Sebastian began to wheeze the name out in mirth. As the incision across his forehead grew, Sebastian laughed more intensely, his whole body shaking with it. He turned to his side as his body trembled, then had his back to Sylar, grasping at his own sides as he heaved with his laughter. The incision finally made it the full way around, and the top of Sebastian’s head fell off and rolled away unnoticed.

Sylar stared with enormous, petrified eyes as the scene continued to unfold. Suddenly a new wave of hysterics hit Sebastian, and as he laughed he bent his body backwards, towards Sylar. The man could see now that the inside of Sebastian’s head was empty, and as he bent back in his torrents of laughter, blood began to spill out of the top of his skull like the most grotesque of goblets spilling its dark wine.

“ _Doctor Suresh! Doctor Suresh!_ ” Sebastian’s inane voice shrieked out between his breaths and chortles. Crimson liquid poured and poured, splashing out in every direction, splattering across Sylar’s lap. 

“ _Doctor Suresh! Doctor Suresh!_ ”

Sylar sat up abruptly with a gasp, and his head struck the seat in front of him.

“Hey,” a hand touched Sylar’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Peter’s voice was concerned, but Sylar pulled back from his touch, taking a deep breath. He blinked several times, letting his eyes adjust to a white setting as opposed to a red one. He could hear the grinding of gears and the drone of giant engines. The murmur of passengers sitting around him was nothing in comparison to the greater dissonance. People aside, the plane was a hideous, cacophonous monster all its own.

“I… I’m fine.” Sylar breathed out, his own heart deafening in his ears.

He cast an uneasy look over at Peter, and Peter gave him a slightly confused one in return. Peter’s expression was almost guilty, and he cleared his throat a little, sitting back in his seat. Peter pushed back his black bangs from his forehead, giving Sylar a moment to compose himself.

Sylar pinched between his eyes, still feeling his heart thud and his head ache. Fear was something he could normally stave off without much of a problem, but the unconscious realm was quite different than the conscious one.

“I, uh,” Peter began hesitantly. “When you woke I was going to ask you about this doctor some more… why you wanted to help this Doctor Suresh so badly. But I guess it’s a little more personal than just friends, so maybe it’s better I not ask, after all.”  
It took Sylar a moment to figure out what exactly Peter was talking about, but then it dawned on him, and he looked over at the younger man curiously, eyes narrowing.

“That’s a neat trick, Peter,” Sylar began, voice lowering, “Seeing into dreams?” Normally Sylar would have been furious, but he was not so distraught that he couldn’t keep his cover going and act as though it didn’t bother him.

“It’s… like mind reading, actually,” Peter corrected him with a short nod, eyes on Sylar. Peter looked a little embarrassed by it.

There was a mental note Sylar made then to switch to French on the inside. 

“Yeah, well, private things go on in a man’s head, I’m sure you know. It’d be best to keep your mind out of mine.” Sylar shifted in his seat, tilting his head back to peek at the screen in front that showed how far they were from New York.

“Sorry,” Peter said honestly, the inflection in his voice obvious. “I can’t really control these abilities sometimes. I mean, I’ve known about them for a few months now, but… I try to ignore them most of the time. They can be dangerous, you know?”

A small part of Sylar wanted to throttle the man for his naïveté right then and there, but he held himself back. Instead, Sylar turned to Peter and forced a small smile. “They don’t have to be dangerous, Peter. That’s the thing. What you and I can do… if we learn to control it properly, there’s no end to the potential. The potential for good.” Sylar felt like a tool for saying it, but he pulled off the phrase without a hitch.

“Or evil,” Peter added thoughtfully. He paused then, contemplating his words. “And this Doctor Suresh… this Mohinder guy,” Peter had picked the name up from Sylar’s dream, but he used it quite unintentionally.“He knows all about what causes these abilities?” Peter paused, casting a testing look over at Sylar. “He’s your boyfriend?”

“…” Sylar raised an eyebrow at Peter, and Peter held up his hands, giving a half smile that looked uncomfortable under Sylar’s serious gaze.

“Hey, I’m not judging here. Love is love, right? I just… if we used to be friends, it’s important information to know, I guess,” Peter added, glancing away at the window and then back at Sylar, looking for a change in his expression.

Sylar sighed, leaning back in his seat. “Yeah… boyfriends… something like that,” he murmured. It felt like so long ago that he and Mohinder had been in the apartment, lost among sheets. He’d only just had Mohinder come home to him, and now he was gone again, only this time in much more serious danger than before. 

“Mohinder,” Sylar began, “I… owe him, and his father, for making me everything that I am. But… mostly him,” Sylar admitted softly. It was perhaps the most honest he had been with Peter.

Peter could sense that reluctant honesty in Sylar’s voice, and he stared at him for a second longer, but did not question it. There was something deeper beneath the surface there, he could see, but Peter had a feeling that, even if they had once been friends, this man did not want to broach whatever he was feeling about this situation anytime soon. Peter could sympathize; he was sure he’d be feeling something terrible and trying his best to stay calm if Caitlin had been abducted overseas. Who knew exactly what Sylar was going through?

“You’re going to meet two men when we arrive,” Sylar broke the silence by continuing to speak and changing the subject. “One is named Bennet, and the other is called the Haitian.”

 

 

“This is impossible…” Mohinder breathed out, tugging his hand through his hair. He groaned in frustration over his stack of the Company’s most recent files on their viral research. Genius though Pratt might have thought himself, there was no way his work was useful in finding a way to cure a manufactured strain of the virus. After hours and hours of dissecting the Company’s lab work, Mohinder had come to the conclusion that these people were little more than children with a great magnifying glass, standing above those unfortunate ants who were unaware of the impending doom.

“Am I gonna die…?” a shaking voice interrupted Mohinder’s thoughts.

The man stood up from his chair in surprise, turning around to find that Elle, feeble and sweating, but very awake, had her eyes open and was watching Mohinder from her hospital bed. Her skin was pale and damp, her eyes glassy and wide, worried as they stared at Mohinder, but obviously struggling to be strong.

“You the special doctor? Daddy said you’re gonna cure me,” she added.

“I’m… Doctor Mohinder Suresh,” Mohinder replied, walking slowly over to her bedside and taking a look at her monitors and IV. Her words struck at the bitterness he felt inside for her, and the words he was thinking came out before he could stop them. “Do you believe everything your father says?”

Elle responded only with silence, unable to meet that question at first. “Daddy-”

“Even after you ended up here?” Mohinder asked a bit sharply. He bit his tongue afterward, feeling his own anger get the best of him in his exhaustion. “I’m sorry,” he added tiredly. “How are you feeling?”

The girl looked as if Mohinder’s first words were an insult she couldn’t quite cope with. She didn’t reply for a moment, searching for words of her own. “Daddy didn’t know,” Elle finally said, “He had a formula. And the special blood. He didn’t know it would do this to me. He thought he had the cure. It was only going to be a test to see how long the virus took to take away powers,” Elle insisted, obviously trying to defend her father in spite of his wrongs.

Mohinder frowned at that. “So he and Pratt had no idea what would happen… all they were working with for a cure was what I’d done?” He gave a disgusted sigh and felt a strike of fear for the futility of this mission. “Even though my blood and formula were only for the original strain of virus, your father was giving them to people to cure the manufactured strains?” Mohinder thought about the dates he had seen on the Company’s file; it appeared Sebastian had been sending his blood samples to the Company for a long while, if that were the case.

But Elle shook her head to Mohinder’s words, blonde bangs sticking to her forehead and temples. “No, it was Adam’s.”

The name was foreign to Mohinder, and it immediately piqued his interest. Not only Mohinder’s blood? But an ‘Adam’ had not been mentioned in the files. Mohinder reached out and touched Elle’s wrist, riveted by the new and potentially useful information. “Adam? Who is Adam?” The strangely Biblical tone of the name made Mohinder shiver a little, imagining the potential for much greater disasters in this facility.

Elle gave a short little breath and turned her head back towards the ceiling, shaking it. “Can’t tell you. Daddy would kill me if I told you…” Adam was a very valuable Company secret, and she had already gotten into enough trouble over him.

“Elle,” Mohinder spoke her name for the first time, squeezing her wrist in his hand. “This virus will kill you if you don’t tell me,” he said seriously, dark eyes imploring. Elle turned her own pale ones to stare at Mohinder, and for an instant looked, in all her struggle to stay strong, as though she wanted to cry.

“I… I can’t… Daddy would…”

“Please, Elle. Let me help you,” Mohinder felt her hand shaking against her sheets, trembling, and he pressed his other hand to it, holding it in his own.

Elle bit her lip softly, eyes filming slowly with tears. Were they tears for her damaged relationship with her father? For the possibility of her death? Mohinder didn’t ask; it wasn’t his business to know. “Daddy was using Adam. Adam can heal from almost anything,” Elle began, letting out a shaky breath. “His blood was curing the weaker strains of the virus in people… but only the weak ones… And then Daddy got your formula.”

Mohinder’s frown wanted desperately to deepen into a scowl, but he held back, trying not to give that to this poor girl, not wanting her to feel any worse when she was the one dying because of her father’s errors. “So he started with this Adam person’s blood… But then he wanted to test using the formula instead?” He and Sebastian had not been done with the formula very long at all; Elle could have only been injected some week or more ago. Mohinder shuddered to think of the risks that Bob had taken.

Elle nodded. She had been witness to those risks, at her father’s side per usual, only this time he had wanted her to participate in the testing as well. They were short of healthy subjects that had not already been injected and then cured, he said, and that she was strong and she could take it.

“Daddy thought the formula you and Sebastian engineered would cure stronger strains of the virus because your blood was a cure for the real thing. But…” her breath caught for a moment, and Elle swallowed. “It didn’t work. He didn’t know your formula wouldn’t cure the Company strains… so he had Sebastian send him your blood raw, and that didn’t work either. After he saw it didn’t do anything, he tried Adam’s blood again. But nothing helped.”

“…And so now I’m here, and you haven’t got long to live,” Mohinder filled in the blanks with a quiet sigh. “A cure-all blood couldn’t do anything more than my own blood cure,” he murmured. The back of Mohinder’s head throbbed a little. “Well, Elle, at the very least, I promise you that I will do everything I can.” Mohinder stared at her frail frame, contemplating. “But right now… I think I need to see some of Adam’s blood.”

 

 

Bennet and the Haitian were staying at a cheap motel on the outskirts of Hartsdale. On the phone Bennet had started giving Sylar directions to go along with the address at some point, but the man had merely said, “I’ll find you,” and left it at that.

And so he had.

Peter Petrelli and the former Gabriel Gray stood outside the motel door, the latter knocking once, hard, to get their attention. The murmurs within stopped, and Sylar heard the click of a gun being cocked on the other side. He sighed loudly, rolling his eyes. “Bennet, just open the door,” Sylar said irritably. 

There was a pause, and then Bennet undid the locks, pulling the door open. His tone was immediately angry. “Would you mind being a little more careful wit-” but his lecture stopped the moment he laid eyes on Peter Petrelli.

“Peter,” Bennet breathed out, KirbyPlaza coming freshly to his thoughts. In his mind’s eye, he saw Peter’s stricken, panicked face, hands aglow and pulsing with a threat beyond all imagining. Here, however, the reality of Peter was a man in a flannel shirt, with his absent, innocent expression still very much alive on his features. “You… haven’t changed... other than being alive, that is.” Bennet opened the door fully and stepped aside for them to enter.

Peter did so, hesitantly, ahead of Sylar. “I… guess it’s good to see you again, too. But it’s more like meeting you again, I think,” Peter began. He glanced briefly around the motel room, eyes falling on the dark-skinned man who stood farther back in the room. When he stared at this man, Peter could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up slowly. He couldn’t place why. Licking his lips a touch nervously, Peter looked back as Sylar was closing the door behind them and then to the man in the glasses who had spoken his name. “You’re Bennet, right?”

“That’s right,” Bennet began. He went to say something else, but paused, and cast his eyes over to Sylar for a moment. He contemplated the gravity of his next words. Hesitating just a second longer, Bennet then looked back at Peter. “We’ve only met twice, actually… the first time, you saved my daughter’s life.” From whom, he neglected to say.

“I did?” Peter’s eyebrows lifted at that, and a small, hopeful half smile quirked slowly at his lips. It seemed Peter liked the sound of being a hero implicitly. The suggestion seemed to make him perk up with a quietly enthusiastic curiosity like the man he had once been.

Bennet couldn’t help but smile a little. “That’s right. You saved my daughter, and then you saved the world.”

“Yeah…!” Peter’s expression lit up a little more, and he looked between Sylar and Bennet at that. “Sylar told me about that… I mean… I almost blew up the city, and then this brother of mine saved me…? I’ll get to meet him, right? After we do this job tonight?”

“We can make that happen,” Bennet promised. “But let’s go ahead and talk about this first.” Forever about business, Bennet offered Peter a nearby chair with a motion of his hand. “This is going to be a very dangerous escapade. Luckily, the three of you have very useful abilities. We have three priorities, and three of you.”

Sylar leaned against the door, crossing one ankle over the other and his arms over his chest. “You make it sound as if you won’t be doing anything yourself, Bennet.” Sylar watched as Peter took a seat, listening astutely to Bennet’s every word.

A slightly sharp look was tossed Sylar’s way, and Bennet’s dislike of the man surfaced as clear as day. “What you all are doing there will be to save the world. What I’m going to be doing will save my daughter,” Bennet said tensely, suggesting that Sylar not argue with him.

The Haitian stepped forward, impassive gaze on each of the three men in turn. They seemed unable to focus on their own, so he felt it was a good time to step in. “Peter will be going with me to dispose of the viral materials in the lab first, and then we will proceed to the virus research files in storage. Mister Sylar will secure Doctor Suresh and ensure his safe escape.”

“I can help get us covertly into the building much easier,” Sylar offered. “I assume since you’re the insider you were going to use your access codes to get us in?” he asked, looking at the Haitian as he spoke. The man only nodded. “Peter and I can secure the perimeter first,” Sylar continued. “I can listen for how many guards are out there and Peter can help quickly take them out. That way there’ll be no one left to block our entrance.”

“Listen for them?” Bennet questioned, not quite catching the man’s meaning.

Sylar raised an eyebrow at Bennet, shifting his crossed arms. “The same way I found you here, Bennet. I listened carefully,” he said, tone mild and faintly condescending.

Narrowing his eyes as it came to him, Bennet wondered for a moment exactly how many victims the FBI had once catalogued from Sylar’s spree. How many powers had he obtained before his quest ended? “What else can you do that we don’t know about?”

Sylar smirked, his own lids lowering at Bennet. “I’d paint you a picture, Bennet, but I learned my lesson, and I’m not fond of vague futures anymore.”

“What about you?” Peter asked Bennet, having still been tuned in to the explanation of the job, pointedly ignoring the tension between these strange men. “What are you going to do while we destroy this virus and these files? While Sylar saves Doctor Suresh?”

Bennet looked from Peter to Sylar again and gave a slight smile, a partial smirk that Sylar couldn’t help but feel familiar with, himself. 

“Me? I have a date with my regional sales manager.”


End file.
